"My father went, and I reckon I'll keep on going."

"You always do as your father did?"

"In most ways."

"But not in all?--I hear startling tales of new-shaped waggons and other adventures, to say nothing of your breaking up gra.s.s next spring."

"Well, if you don't see any difference between breaking up gra.s.s and giving up church ..."

"They are both a revolt from habit."

"Now, don't you talk like that--it ain't seemly. I don't like hearing a man make a mock of good things, and going to church is a good thing, as I should ought to know, having just come out of it."

"I'm sorry," said Martin humbly, and for some reason he felt ashamed.

They were walking now along the Pedlinge road, and the whole Marsh, so broad and simple, seemed to join in her rebuke of him.

She saw his contrite look, and repented of her sharpness.

"Come along home and have a bit of our Christmas dinner."

Martin stuttered--he had not expected such an invitation, and it alarmed him.

"We all have dinner together on Christmas Day," continued Joanna, "men and gals, old Stuppeny, Mrs. Tolhurst, everybody--we'd take it kindly if you'd join us. But--I'm forgetting--you'll be having your own dinner at home."

"We shan't have ours till the evening."

"Oh--late dinner"--her tone became faintly reverential--"it ud never do if we had that. The old folk, like Stuppeny and such, ud find their stomachs keep them awake. We've got two turkeys and a goose and plum puddings and mince pies, to say nothing of the oranges and nuts--that ain't the kind of food to go to bed with."

"I agree," said Martin, smiling.

"Then you'll come and have dinner at Ansdore?"

They had reached the first crossing of the railway line, and if he was going back to North Farthing he should turn here. He could easily make an excuse--no man really wanted to eat two Christmas dinners--but his flutter was gone, and he found an attraction in the communal meal to which she was inviting him. He would like to see the old folk at their feast, the old folk who had been born on the Marsh, who had grown wrinkled with its sun and reddened with its wind and bent with their labours in its damp soil. There would be Joanna too--he would get a close glimpse of her. It was true that he would be pulling the cord between them a little tighter, but already she was drawing him and he was coming willingly. To-day he had found in her an unsuspected streak of goodness, a sound, sweet core which he had not looked for under his paradox of softness and brutality.... It would be worth while committing himself with Joanna G.o.dden.

--11

Dinner on Christmas Day was always in the kitchen at Ansdore. When Joanna reached home with Martin, the two tables, set end to end, were laid--with newly ironed cloths and newly polished knives, but with the second-best china only, since many of the guests were clumsy. Joanna wished there had been time to get out the best china, but there was not.

Ellen came flying to meet them, in a white serge frock tied with a red sash.

"Arthur Alce has come, Jo--we're all waiting. Is Mr. Trevor coming too?"

and she put her head on one side, looking up at him through her long fringe.

"Yes, duckie. Mr. Trevor's dropped in to taste our turkey and plum pudding--to see if they ain't better than his own to-night."

"Is he going to have another turkey and plum pudding to-night? How greedy!"

"Be quiet, you sa.s.sy little cat"--and Joanna's hand swooped, missing Ellen's head only by the sudden duck she gave it.

"Leave me alone, Joanna--you might keep your temper just for Christmas Day."

"I won't have you sa.s.s strangers."

"I wasn't sa.s.sing."

"You was."

"I wasn't."

Martin felt scared.

"I hope you don't mean me by the stranger," he said, taking up lightness as a weapon, "I think I know you well enough to be sa.s.sed--not that I call that sa.s.sing."

"Well, it's good of you not to mind," said Joanna, "personally I've great ideas of manners, and Ellen's brought back some queer ones from her school, though others she's learned are beautiful. Fancy, she never sat down to dinner without a serviette."

"Never," said Ellen emphatically.

Martin appeared suitably impressed. He thought Ellen a pretty little thing, strangely exotic beside her sister.

Dinner was ready in the kitchen, and they all went in, Joanna having taken off her coat and hat and smoothed her hair. Before they sat down there were introductions to Arthur Alce and to Luck and Broadhurst and Stuppeny and the other farm people. The relation between employer and employed was at once more patriarchal and less sharply defined at Ansdore than it was at North Farthing--Martin tried to picture his father sitting down to dinner with the carter and the looker and the housemaid ... it was beyond imagination, yet Joanna did it quite naturally. Of course there was a smaller gulf between her and her people--the social grades were inclined to fuse on the Marsh, and the farmer was only just better than his looker--but on the other hand, she seemed to have far more authority....

"Now, hold your tongues while I say grace," she cried.

Joanna carved the turkeys, refusing to deputise either to Martin or to Alce. At the same time she led a general kind of conversation. The Christmas feast was to be communal in spirit as well as in fact--there were to be no formalities above the salt or mutterings below it. The new harmonium provided a good topic, for everyone had heard it, except Mrs.

Tolhurst who had stayed to keep watch over Ansdore, cheering herself with the prospect of carols in the evening.

"It sounded best in the psalms," said Wilson, Joanna's looker since Socknersh's day--"oh, the lovely grunts it made when it said--'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee!"

"So it did," said Broadhurst, "but I liked it best in the Herald Angels."

"I liked it all through," said Milly Pump, the chicken-girl. "And I thought Mr. Elphick middling clever to make it sound as if it wur playing two different tunes at the same time."

"Was that how it sounded?" asked Mrs. Tolhurst wistfully, "maybe they'll have it for the carols to-night."

"Surelye," said old Stuppeny, "you'd never have carols wudout a harmonister. I'd lik myself to go and hear it, but doubt if I ull git so far wud so much good victual inside me."

"No, you won't--not half so far," said Joanna briskly, "you stop at home and keep quiet after this, or you'll be having bad dreams to-night."

"I never do but have one kind o' dream," said old Stuppeny, "I dream as I'm setting by the fire and a young gal brings me a cup of cocoa. 'Tis but an old dream, but reckon the Lord G.o.d sends the old dreams to the old folk--all them new dreams that are about on the Marsh, they goes to the young uns."

"Well, you've no call to complain of your dreams, Stuppeny," said Wilson, "'tisn't everyone who has the luck to dream regular of a pretty young gal. Leastways, I guess she's pretty, though you aun't said it."

"I doan't take much count on her looks--'tis the cocoa I'm after, though it aun't often as the Lord G.o.d lets the dream stay till I've drunk my cup. Sometimes 'tis my daughter Nannie wot brings it, but most times 'tis just some unacquainted female."

"Oh, you sorry old dog," said Wilson, and the table laughed deep-throatedly, or giggled, according to s.e.x. Old Stuppeny looked pleased. His dream, for some reason unknown to himself, never failed to raise a laugh, and generally produced a cup of cocoa sooner or later from one of the girls.